“Vagaries” and “Transfigure” – Stranger Factory in June

Stranger Factory has two exhibits opening in June; “Vagaries” featuring new work from Carisa Swenson, Allison Sommers, Kelly Denato, and Michelle Lynch, and in the Project Room, “Transfigure”, a new exhibit by Katie Carillo.

“Vagaries” is a four-person exhibit with four distinctive voices in contemporary character art, each exploring the further corners of their work, and allowing themselves the opportunity to explore a bit beyond the walls of their usual style and themes. Without losing their distinct styles and voices, each artist is nonetheless enabled to create new work without the need for an overall theme.

Carisa Swenson sculpts and stitches odd and endearing characters that tread the line between fantastic and familiar. Her passion for these remarkable beasts comes from her lifelong love of mythology, cryptozoology, and the groundbreaking work of artists like Ray Harryhausen and the Henson Workshop. Her assemblage of wee beasties give us a glimpse of a fantastic world just beyond the edges of our childhood memories.

Allison Sommers is a Brooklyn-based artist who practices art less as an artist and more as an inventor or tinkerer; she considers all avenues and frequently changes her medium or technique to realize her vision. An experienced creator of paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, collage, and more, Sommers brings to Stranger Factory new works that are dark, exciting, and unsettling.

Kelly Denato is a Brooklyn-based artist whose delicate and ethereal paintings capture a hidden dimension of sight and emotion, taking stylized versions of the familiar and giving them new life as they spew ribbons of vivid color in the pursuit of their desires. Her work illustrates the slow strokes of melancholy alongside bursts of passion and love, in a surrealistic setting.

Michelle Lynch sculpts and paints strange characters pondering their own humanity as they experience the world through their unusual forms and metallic implements. Her “Steampunk Souls” seem to ride the line between child and machine, forever trying to find their footing as they straddle two worlds.

In the Project Room, Katie Carillo explores nature with a surrealistic eye for detail in a series of new paintings. Carillo pulls animals out of their natural habitat and then isolates and manipulates them to give the viewer a sense of bewilderment as familiar creatures melt or give way to almost blinding palettes of unnatural (for them) colors. Her newest body of work explores the ways in which nature changes itself, and the way that our observation can change nature.